This is a blog about growing vegetables for home use in the Pacific Northwest. We do raised-bed, intensive gardening using galvanized animal watering troughs as planter boxes. We collect and store rain water for our garden. Our blog records our learning process and experiences with this type of gardening.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Fence

Once we got the water issues addressed, the next thing of concern was the herd of deer which roam freely over our land all year long. Not being in the least fearful of us or our cat, they would happily eat anything we planted. Obviously, we needed a fence.

Where to put it? Our 5-acres is sloped and shaded, entirely devoid of any sunny, level areas large enough for a garden. Just to the south of our house, there's a long, gradual slope that gets nearly full sun. Sun is good; slope isn't so good. But it was the only choice.

We hired Ezra Richardson Contracting, of Lopez Island, an experienced fence builder to build us a 20-foot enclosed garden area. Since we intend to use a horse-trough method of intensive, raised-bed gardening, we also needed level concrete pads on which to put the troughs. I'll be writing more about them in the next post.

So below is a picture story about building the fence and concrete pads.

Robin, being a bead artist, made tassels with Tibetan beads and bells, mounting them from the gate top. She also "inscribed" two of the concrete pads, one with our initials and the other with a spiral. Now we're ready to garden!

About Me

My wife, Robin, and I live on a rocky ridge in the middle of an island located in the NW corner of Washington state. Our 5 acres in its natural state (downward-sloping, moss-covered rocks shaded by madrona and fir trees) is a deer haven.

In 2011, deciding to learn gardening and produce some edibles for our table, we set about creating a garden. Our only water source is rain, so number one was to figure out how to get water (hence the name of our blog). Next we had to consider how to keep the deer from eating our goodies. And then, since we are both seniors, we had to figure out how to raise the garden beds. Our solution is raised bed, horse trough gardening, which also helps with water conservation.